Tackling youth unemployment with agriculture

To experts, agriculture will really create jobs when the youth are involved, DANIEL ESSIET reports.

Founder of Agrihub Ronke Aderinoye is an ex-banker and agro-entrepreneur. Her expertise is in agriculture and rural services. She works with farmers in Ogun State. She has seen the image of poor, ragged and weather-beaten farmers which puts off many young people. She is determined to change the picture of the business to encourage young people to have a second thought about agriculture as the source of jobs.

For her, the sector has huge potential. She has seen the future around agriculture as the main force in social and economic transformation of the economy.

She said there was a need for a vibrant agribusiness private sector that would work alongside the government to link farmers with consumers.

Her solutions include boosting rural development through a chain of activities that add value to agricultural products, and empowering youths to run small businesses.

She started Young Farmer’s Incubator Programme (YFIP), in collaboration with Eweko Concept and Epe Agribusiness Cluster, to train youths to start up a farm. The goal of the programme is to grow the next generation of agribusiness professionals. The programme is designed to train youths between the ages of 18 and 26, who aspire to start up a farm but neither have the capital nor the knowledge of farming, through a 100 per cent hands-on farm training for four months.

The programme, according to her, is a 16-month intensive course on technical and non-technical aspects of agribusiness.

The trainees will undergo full- time farm training in Epe, Lagos State. The first stream of YFIP, she explained, will focus on vegetables such as tomatoes, pepper, cucumber and cabbage. The curriculum will cover pre-planting and post planting operations, post-harvest management practices, business planning, farm records and book keeping, agricultural marketing, as well as legal, finance and tax matters.

The facilitators are credible, competent and have proven track record of successes in their respective businesses and fields, and have a cumulative experience of over 35. This programme is divided into five stages and each participant is expected to successfully complete each stage before moving up to the next stage.

At incubation stage, successful candidates will get three months’ training when they will be allotted mini-plots. Mentors will help and answers.

The incubation stage will cover key drivers of agribusinesses namely, business planning, agricultural marketing, laws, farm management, pre- and post-harvest handling, pre-and post-planting management and opportunities across the agriculture value chain. After this, successful candidates will be move to the next stage.

At the accelerator, successful candidates will be provided with land for farming. Seeds and other required tools will be provided. Production at this stage will be supervised by the AgriHub Nigeria and will continue for four planting cycles. Candidates will be better exposed to the realities of farming at this stage as they will be doing most of the farm work and also the marketing work.

One major benefit participants will get at the end of this stage is that they will have farm records of over 12 months, which will put them in a better stead to access finance to set up their own farm. Participants in YFIP must be willing to stay in Epe throughout the programme.

Accommodation would be provided for participants. One area, she sees huge potential is in rice production. The rice sector alone has the potential to employ many of the 17 million young people who enter the job market in sub-Saharan Africa each year.

With Agropreneur Nigeria, her organisation is holding bi-monthly Green Table sessions to assist middle and upper class workers, entrepreneurs, and investors to understand the rice value chain and to tap into the opportunities.

She has support from the Chief Executive Officer, Kereksuk Rice Farm, Rotimi Williams, whose 50,000 hectares rice farm in Nasarawa State provides enough food and jobs. For him, increased focus on agriculture could enhance productivity, reduce food prices, increase incomes and create employment. To achieve this, he said young people’s involvement in this process is crucial.

Kereksuk Rice Farm has become a successful agribusiness enterprise. Williams believes the future is bright for agribusiness in Nigeria.